The Summer Garden

“Can I help?” Alexander asked, working very, very hard at a straight face. “How about I boil some water on the stove and wash it out?”

Mixing boiling water with the cold, Alexander sat shirtless at the edge of the tub and scrubbed Tatiana’s head with shampoo. Later they had cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s tomato soup. The tank reheated; Tatiana washed the hair again. The smell seemed to come out, but when the hair dried, it still smelled like mayonnaise. After they put Anthony to bed, Alexander ran the bath for her and washed her hair once more. They ran out of shampoo. They used heavy duty soap. The hair still smelled.

“It’s like your lobsters,” she said.

“Come on, the fish weren’t this bad.”

“Mom almost smells like herself again,” said Anthony when Alexander came home the next day. “Go ahead, Dad, smell her.”

Dad leaned down and smelled her. “Mmm, quite like herself,” he agreed, placing his hand on her hair.

Tatiana knew that today her hair, down to her lower back, glowed gold and was silken and shiny and exceedingly soft. She had bought strawberry shampoo that was berry fresh and washed her coconut-suntan-lotioned body with vanilla scented soap. Tatiana sidled against Alexander, gazing up up up at him. “Do you like it?” she asked, her breath catching.

“As you know.” But he took his hand away and only glanced down down down at her.

She got busy with steak and plantains and tomato roulade.

Later, out on the deck, he said quietly, “Tania, go get your brush.”

She ran to get the brush. Standing behind her—as if in another life—Alexander slowly, carefully, gently brushed out her hair, running his palm down after each stroke of the brush. “It’s very soft,” he whispered. “What in the world did you put mayonnaise in it for?”

“The hair was dry from the coloring, the leaching and then the ocean,” Tatiana replied. “Mayonnaise is supposed to make it smooth again.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Read it in a beauty magazine.” She closed her eyes. It felt so good to have his hands in her hair. Her hot liquid stomach was pulsing.

“You need to stop with the magazines.” Bending, Alexander pressed his mouth into the back of her head, running his lips back and forth against her, and Tatiana groaned, and was embarrassed that she couldn’t stop herself in time.

“If I don’t read them, how else am I going to know how to please my husband?” she said thickly.

“Tatia, you don’t need to read any magazines for that,” he said.

We’ll have to see about that, she thought, in trepidation at her own anticipated audacity, turning around and stretching out her tremulous hand to him.

His hands behind his head, Alexander lay naked in bed on his back, waiting for her. Tatiana locked the door, took off her silk robe and stood in front of him with her long blonde tresses down over her shoulders. She liked the look in his eyes tonight. It wasn’t neutral. When he reached to switch off the light she said, no, leave the light on.

“Leave the light on?” he said. “This is new.”

“I want you to look at me,” Tatiana said, climbing on top of his stomach, spanning him. Slowly she let her hair fall down onto his chest.

“How does it feel?” she murmured.

“Mmm.” His hands on her hips, Alexander arched his stomach into her open thighs.

“Silky, right?” she purred. “So soft, silky … velvety …”

And Alexander groaned.

He groaned! He opened his mouth and an unsuppressed sound of excitement left his throat.

“Feel me, Shura …” she murmured, continuing to rub herself ever so lightly against his bare stomach, her long loose hair fluttering along with her flutters. But it was stirring her up too much; she had to stop. “I thought maybe if the hair was silky,” she whispered, moving her head from side to side as the cascading mane feathered him in silk strands across his chest, “you’d want to put your hands in it … your lips in it again.”

“My hands are on it,” he let out.

“I didn’t say on it. I said in it.”

Alexander stroked her hair.

She shook her head. “No. That’s how you touch it now. I want you to touch it like you touched it then.”

Alexander closed his eyes, his mouth parting. His gripping hands pulled her hips lower on him, while he pulled himself higher. Tatiana felt him so geared up and searching for her that in one second all her grand efforts with mayonnaise were going to come to the very same end that had already been happening in their bed for months.

Quickly she bent to him, moving herself up and away. “Tell me,” she whispered into his face, “why have you stopped caring how I keep my hair?”

“I haven’t stopped.”

“Yes, you have. Come on. You’re talking to me. Tell me why.”

Falling quiet, Alexander took his hands away from her hips and rested them on her knees.

“Tell me. Why don’t you touch me?”

Alexander paused heavily, looking away from her searching eyes. “The hair is not mine anymore. It belongs to the other you, the you of New York and red nail polish and high-heeled dancing, and Vikki, and building a life without me when you thought I was dead—as you absolutely should have. I’m not against you. But that’s what it reminds me of. I’m just telling you.”

Tatiana put her hand on his cheek. “Do you want me to cut it? I’ll cut it all off right now.”

“No.” Alexander moved his face away. They were quiet. “But nothing is ever enough, have you noticed?” he said. “I can’t touch you enough. I can’t make you happy. I can’t say anything right to you. And you can’t take away from me a single thing I’ve fucked up along the way.”

She became deflated. “You’re here, and you’re forgiven for everything,” she said quietly, sitting up and closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at his tattooed arms and his scar-ribbon chest.

“Tell me the truth,” Alexander said. “Don’t you sometimes think it’s harder—this—and other stuff like the magazines quizzes—harder for the two of us? That magazine quiz just points up the absurdity of us pretending we’re like normal people. Don’t you sometimes think it would be easier with your Edward Ludlow in New York? Or a Thelma? No history. No memories. Nothing to get over, nothing to claw back from.”

“Would it be easier for you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t hear you cry every night,” Alexander said. “I wouldn’t feel like such a failure every minute of my life.”

“Oh my God! What are you talking about?” Tatiana yanked to get off him, but now it was Alexander who held her in place.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said, his eyes blazing. “I want amnesia! I want a fucking lobotomy. Could I please never think again? Look what’s happened to us, us, Tania. Don’t you remember how we used to be? Just look what’s happened.”

His long winter’s night bled into Coconut Grove through all the fields and villages in three countries Alexander plundered through to get to the Bridge to Holy Cross, over the River Vistula, to get into the mountains, to escape to Germany, to save Pasha, to make his way to Tatiana. And he failed. Twenty escape attempts—two in Catowice, one ill-fated one in Colditz Castle, and seventeen desperate ones in Sachsenhausen, and he never got to her. He had somehow made all the wrong choices. Alexander knew it. Anthony knew it. With the son asleep, the parents had hours to mindlessly meander through the fields and rivers of Europe, through the streets of Leningrad. That was not to be wished upon.

“Stop it,” Tatiana whispered. “Just stop it! You didn’t fail. You’re looking at it all twisted. You stayed alive, that was all, that was everything, and you know that. Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” he said. “You want it out while sitting naked on top of my stomach with your hair down? Well, here it is. You don’t want it out? Then don’t ask me. Turn the light off, keep the braid in, get your”—Alexander stopped himself—“get off me, and say nothing.”

Tatiana did none of those things. She didn’t want it out, what she wanted, desperately, was him to touch her. Though the aching in her heart from his words was unabated, the aching in her loins from her desire for him was also unabated. She remained on him, watching his face watching her. Gently she stroked his chest, his arms, his shoulders. Bending to him, she flickered her moist soft lips over his face, over his neck, and in a little while, when she felt him calm down, she whispered to him. Shura … it’s me, your Tania, your wife …